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User blog:GameReviewsSteam/Game Review: Hitman: Absolution
Hitman Absolution Hello everybody in this review we will take a look at Hitman: Absolution for PC, Xbox and PlayStation. This is the fifth game in the Hitman series and the first one be published under Square Enix it was developed by IO Interactive and released in November of 2012 and it's kind of interesting because it was considered a betrayal by pretty much all of the hardcore Hitman fans and when I first saw it I looked at it and went why could they do this because they decided to make it a very different game from the previous releases which is kind of a shame because Hitman: Blood Money was an absolutely fantastic well polished game and then you get to ABSOLUTion GARBAGE! Just kidding, Its just this wildly different direction so is the fan backlash justified here? Or did this new direction actually pay off well and explored some new mechanics never before seen in a Hitman game? Before we really get into the MEAT of the game: Presentation Let's first talk about the presentation where nobody really denies that it's absolutely phenomenal the graphics in this game are spectacular runs in the glacier engine that's the first game to do so and what you get as a result is extreme amounts of detail in the environments in the characters their animations all of that the only real downside to it is that they over use things like bloom lighting and lens flare and there's this really annoying film grain effect I don't know how to get rid of it but other than those THIS game looks absolutely phenomenal and in particular there's a lot of open areas with a lot of people in them and these actually end up being just as good-looking as the parts were that are sparse on people so they're to be commended for doing an absolute phenomenal job making sure the visuals for top-notch as well as being able to have these large and open environments where there's tons of detail. But compared to other Hitman games, even the newest Hitman 2016, this game just looks dirty, but dirty in a good way of course! Now tons of people in them that said the voice acting is a bit of a mixed bag I say that because quality wise it's phenomenal the actors all do fantastic jobs but they do such fantastic jobs that it really exposes the flaws in the writing and they're saying a lot of lines that just sound absurd and their characters are ridiculous so these phenomenal voice actors end up being kind of wasted on these crappy characters I know that bleeds over into the storyline a bit but we'll get to that in a moment as far as the rest of the sound effects go they did a really good job with all of the sound effects all the environmental sounds the music is even quite good and it fits with the Hitman vibe pretty well for the most part but that's not really what matters in the long run here. =StoryLine and Failed Plot= Now the presentation I'm 100% sure that's certainly not what people got up in arms about no really matter are the story and the gameplay and they're also the two most divisive issues in the game the story in particular because it was given way more emphasis than any of the previous Hitman games in fact it's what dictates literally everything in this game and it just ends up being ridiculous forty-seven is at the very beginning the game test with finding and killing his former handler Diana and she tells him to keep this girl safe that she stole from the agency and obviously whenever the agency is involved it's not gonna be good so 47 ends up going rogue basically and while the agency is trying to track him down and get the girl back he's also running into these various antagonists the major one being some stereotypical redneck named Blake Dexter he's basically an arms dealer and as pretty much it he's also completely psychotic he's a total sadist all that sort of thing in fact all the villains in this game are rather strong as far as people that you hate and want to take out go they're not very well characterized however because they end up just being ridiculous in fact everything in this game ridiculous the whole premise of the plot is absurd the plot itself is absurd and it ends up being basically Hollywood action rather than Hitman in fact this entire game just feels wrong in every single aspect literally everything the story the way you're going about things the level design which is SUPER LINEAR, and every single thing is centered around that story and being Hollywood action not Hitman. Hitman may have been linear in the past but you had the option to approach a level in many different ways. This game it seems you are too limited in option. =Bad Level Design and Mechanics= So right off the bat they've gone and done wrong and the plot really fizzles out toward the end anyway and ends up just having this rather cheesy ending I was extremely disappointed in the whole single-player campaign /story as far as its plot went especially but what about the gameplay well the level design like I said is not designed to be Hitman anymore which is a real shame because that's what made the previous games great it wasn't the writing it was the gameplay where you went into these levels and you felt like you were trying to be this you know silent assassin kind of character and the harder you try the better it got basically in Absolution it pretty much fore goes everything you know there's still the elements there that you would expect from Hitman you still sneak around find disguises distract guards, etc. All that sort of thing and you try to find a variety of ways to take out targets when you do have them but a very and I mean very large portion of this game is spent evading where you're trying not to get spotted and trying not to take anybody out it's so unlike Hitman that it just feels wrong immediately and that there's so much of that in the game is a real shame then when you get to these levels that open up and give you various targets you suddenly see that hey they did remember that this is a Hitman and in some ways it's even better than the previous games part of this comes from engine enhancements that at the same time they screwed a lot of things up so for every moment where you're using the environment to take out your targets make it look like an accident and have these awesome moments where you just feel incredibly satisfied with taking out the bad guys in so many other instances it just gets ridiculous like when you're in a disguise for instance where nobody else will actually notice you basically but if you're in this place where you're not supposed to be which makes sense or if you walk by someone who is in the same sort of disguise as you it just throws everything off because then they almost instantly spot you well what do you do in that instance well you go to your instinct meter yep instinct instincts used for a variety of things the one I just mentioned is called "blending in" where when you walk past someone you use this button and it makes you "blend in" more like try to and they don't spot you well you can also use it to see enemies through walls which actually doesn't use instinct. It just uses activates the meter basically you can also use it to do point shooting which is basically the mark and execute thing from Splinter Cell Conviction where can instantly take out a variety of targets very quickly it's ridiculous it just feels wrong in every aspect and having this instinct meter in the game is a huge detriment especially considering it's designed to be played with that instinct meter if you're playing on the purist difficulty good luck you're gonna need it because like I said this game operates on its instinct mechanics it doesn't play like a fresh Hitman game. Ultimately that's the biggest problem I have with it the vast majority of levels are very very linear it doesn't open up and let you take out targets except for a few instances in the entire game and what's sad is those moments tend to be pretty fantastic they have they're ridiculous things with the disguises and being blown very easily but at the same time when you're able to actually take out a target and then get away without ever having been spotted it just it's immensely satisfying but then you have the vast majority of the other levels where it just ends up feeling wrong in every aspect and in fact towards the end it feels like it's just trying to be an action game rather than a stealth game it's like you couldn't figure out what they wanted to do with it and just said screw it we're gonna throw all this junk in here so for every moment that's great you have so many more that are terrible it's just this rollercoaster in the single-player campaign and it feels wrong in so many spots and feels right in only a few it's just a real shame because when those moments happen you can see where this game could have been absolutely brilliant. =Multiplayer: Contracts sorta= That leaves the contract mode the contracts mode is basically this multiplayerish system I say multiplayer because it's still single-player you're still doing everything yourself but this is where other players can create contracts they'll go into levels they'll mark various targets they'll take them out in a certain way and then that's how you're supposed to actually go through those contracts it's an interesting idea the problem is it doesn't really work all that well because the levels aren't designed for it so what ends up happening is that you'll go into these things and it'll basically just be the single-player missions but with different targets or if there wasn't the target then there now will be one and it just feels weird having to go through these things. =Summary= I largely avoided the contract mode except just to try it out and see how it is it doesn't work very well so what improvements did they make in general well shootings better they've added in a cover system and it works pretty well for the most part that's about it I mean there's more interactions with the environments and limited aspects and some of those are pretty great but by and large they just missed the mark on every single thing in this game they just didn't understand what made Hitman great to begin with or maybe they did and they just tried something different to appeal to the masses I don't know but this game is too niche to be something that appeals to the masses it's not easy enough for them but at the same time it just feels wrong for Hitman fans so I don't know who this games for I really don't it's just this jumbled mess it doesn't really know what it's doing and there are moments that are absolutely brilliant but for the most part the game is just incredibly disappointing compound that with the fact that I had a lot of performance issues playing this thing a lot of that's just because my processor is ageing but even then it's just not a great experience and having followed up Blood Money is especially a problem because Blood Money was absolutely brilliant then you get to this and it's just a step back in far too many ways so in the long run that gets it a out. I rate Absolution a 5/10 for effort. Category:Blog posts